III-V semiconductors have desirable properties of higher carrier mobility and lifetime than silicon. They have been successfully employed in metal semiconductor Schottky devices, but have not been employed in the more widely useful metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices. The reason for this is that the native oxides of the III-V materials do not form thermodynamically stable layers thereon in the way that silicon dioxide layers can be formed on silicon to form MIS devices. Silicon oxynitride and Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 have been used as an insulating layer on III-V materials with apparently little success.
Thus it is highly desirable to find a material which readily forms an insulating layer on III-V materials and thus provide the basis for the formation of MIS devices.